CHICAGO — Mired in a collective offensive slump, the Chicago Cubs are preaching sticking with the process — and not worrying about the results — as a way out of it.
The team has lost three consecutive series for the first time all season, culminating in a 2-1 defeat to the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday when the Cubs failed to push across the tying run in the eighth inning despite having runners on second and third with no outs.
“There’s a tendency to make everything sound worse than it is in our game,” manager Craig Counsell said Friday before facing the Pittsburgh Pirates. “That’s the nature of it when it’s every day.
“Things not going right is not what’s happening. I think that’s what you fall into. This is baseball that’s happening. You have to be tough enough to roll with that.”
Chicago ranks 28th in runs scored since the All-Star break after being at the top of the league for most of the first three months of the season. There’s no single culprit, as most of the top and middle of the order has struggled.
Right fielder Kyle Tucker was asked how to break out of it.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You just figure it out. We play so many games, you just got to get through it at times.”
Tucker is hitting .195 since July 1 with just one home run and four extra-base hits. After jamming his right ring finger on a slide in early June, he finished the month strong but has gone backward since.
The finger is “fine,” Tucker said.
He isn’t the only one struggling. Designated hitter Seiya Suzuki has driven in just eight runs since the break — he had 77 RBIs in the first half — while hitting .182. First baseman Michael Busch is batting .171 since the break, while left fielder Ian Happ is at .228.
But no one has struggled more of late than center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, who had just three hits and 15 strikeouts in August before a second-inning double Friday.
“It becomes the self-inflicted pressure when you feel like you’re not playing your part in contributing,” Crow-Armstrong said before Friday’s game. “When stuff starts to kind of pile up like that, it sucks, but it’s also baseball and I still have however many fricking weeks left this season, and it’s still a lot of time to begin to produce again.”
Counsell added: “Sticking to the things that get you results and being OK it might not happen at that exact time you want it to is the right way to be your best self. I think we have to be consistent with that. For us to focus on results is harmful, so you focus on things that contribute to us being good.”
That’s the collective feeling of the group inside the clubhouse as the Cubs continue to maintain a spot in the wild-card race, even if the division seems as if it could be slipping away. Wins are still coming — just not at the clip they were during the first half. And the club still hasn’t been swept in a three- or four-game series — one of two teams in baseball that can make that claim.
There’s still time to find that offensive groove again as the Cubs look to cut into the Milwaukee Brewers‘ lead in the division while also staving off the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card race.
“Brewers are hot,” Crow-Armstrong said. “The Reds are playing good baseball. It’s another division matchup [this weekend]. I mean, the Cubbies are the Cubbies. We’re going to go keep playing the same baseball we played all year. … It’s been an interesting two weeks, but we’re fine. I don’t think there’s any worry in the world.”
